Barbara Martini

A novel service oriented framework for automatically switched transport network

In the last few years customers are willing to use broadband connections to support concurrent and heterogeneous services. At the same time telecommunication operators would like to use the same transport infrastructure (possibly with minor changes) to deliver these emerging services in an integrated way. To this purpose, enhancements of the existing ASTN architecture are proposed. Specifically the intelligent network conceptual model is used to introduce an intermediate layer, named service layer, to interface the network customer to a service-independent transport network. The service plane has the task of masking the transport-related implementation details from the abstract request of a service by a customer. In addition, the service layer inherently suggests the separation of the telecommunication operators role in two distinct activities: the network provider and the service provider. The proposed service-oriented architecture is described in terms of functional blocks and interfaces and it consists in an open framework subjects to be implemented using whatever technology, both hardware and software. For a proof of concept, a testbed, named SOON (service oriented optical networks) running the newly developed service-oriented software modules has been implemented as an example of direct interaction between customer and optical network for a dynamic service request. The validation of the architecture is done by demonstrating a working service, namely a virtual private network (VPN) service.

Network virtualization for cloud computing

Cloud computing enables a transparent access to information technology (IT) services such that the users do not need to know the location and characteristics of the relevant resources. While IT resource virtualization and service abstraction have been widely investigated, data transport within the cloud and its efficient control have not received much attention in the technical literature. In fact, connectivity is, itself, a service that contributes to the overall performance of the cloud. This paper introduces a novel classification of the Network as a Service (NaaS) such that it can be orchestrated with other cloud services. Then, it proposes a network virtualization platform (NVP) as the mediation layer able to provide NaaS to cloud computing by exploiting the functionality provided by control plane (CP)-enabled networks. In particular, the proposed NVP maps the end-point addresses and perceived Quality of Service parameters of a NaaS requests in the parameters characterizing the connectivity as viewed by transport networks using the information obtained from the CP at the boundary of the network. The NVP uses these parameters to fulfill connectivity requests to the CP. Finally, this paper presents a complete design from both the software implementation and network signaling perspective of two use cases in which NaaS is involved as stand-alone facility for the connectivity service provisioning or is combined with other cloud services for a storage service provisioning.

An advanced smart management system for electric vehicle recharge

Recent studies about climate change are mandating a drastic reduction of green house gas (GHG) emissions. Solutions include the utilization of renewable energy sources (e.g., wind, solar energy) and the increased utilization of hybrid and electric vehicles (EVs). In this scenario ICT can play a significant role by fostering the smart utilization of current energy and transportation infrastructures (smart grid and smart cities). This paper presents a new ICT infrastructure to enable the intelligent exploitation of distributed energy resources in order to minimize the EV charging times while optimizing the efficiency of the electrical infrastructure. The proposed system is based on a distributed communication infrastructure (both wired and wireless) aimed at collecting/emitting bidirectional energy dispatching opportunities for electric vehicles. The envisaged system seamlessly interconnects emerging self-organizing wireless technologies (i.e., VANETs and Wireless Mesh Networks), with legacy wired communication technologies, to guarantee a fast rollout of the EV charging service with minimum investments in communication infrastructures. The performance of the proposed solution is evaluated in terms of its sustainability by analyzing the quality of the charging service as perceived by the users, and the capability of the charging infrastructure to meet the charging requests in a timely manner.

Anycast-based optimizations for inter-data-center interconnections [Invited]

The cloud service delivery model is driving the data center (DC) architectural model towards a fully virtualized infrastructure acting as geographically distributed pools of shared resources, dynamically allocated to different services. Such a scenario calls for the anycast routing of virtual machine (VM) migration requests in order to select the destination server where the VMs will be migrated by taking into account the actual load of DC interconnections while addressing VM data transfer requirements. To this purpose, a management platform is presented that enables the dynamic connectivity setup between DCs without a priori indication of the destination server, according to the anycast principle. Specifically, data path allocation policies are proposed to select a proper inter-DC network path, and accordingly a destination server, to allow VM migration data to experience adequate delay performance. Using a simulation approach, the policies are compared in terms of success rate of delay-constrained data path setup as well as in terms of their capability to limit migration delay.

Latency-aware composition of Virtual Functions in 5G

The adoption of the virtualization paradigm in both computing and networking domains portends a landscape of heterogeneous service capabilities and resources pervasively distributed and interconnected and deeply integrated through the 5G network infrastructure. In this service ecosystem, dynamic service demand can be flexibly and elastically accomplished by composing heterogeneous services provisioned over a distributed and virtualized resource infrastructure. Indeed, with the term Virtual Functions we refer to virtual computing as well as network service capabilities (e.g., routers and middlebox functions provided as Virtual Network Functions). In order to cope with the increasingly resource intensive demand, these virtual functions will be deployed in distributed clusters of small-scale datacenters typically located in current exchanges at the network edge and will supplement those deployed in traditional large cloud datacenters. In this work we formulate the problem of composing, computing and networking Virtual Functions to select those nodes along the path that minimizes the overall latency (i.e. network and processing latency) in the above mentioned scenario. The optimization problem is formulated as a Resource Constrained Shortest Path problem on an auxiliary layered graph accordingly defined. The layered structure of the graph ensures that the order of VFs specified in the request is preserved. Additional constraints can be also taken into account in the graph construction phase. Finally, we provide a use case preliminary evaluation of the proposed model.

Application-Driven Control of Network Resources in Multiservice Optical Networks

Network architectures whose resources are open to control by user applications require the design of a service platform that performs resource virtualization and service abstraction. While a few commercial architectures for packet networks already exist, service platforms for connection-oriented networks (e.g., optical) are currently under investigation. After introducing the service concept in the optical network scenario, the paper proposes and experimentally validates a service platform for application-driven resource management in a GMPLS-controlled optical network. Specifically, upon a service request issued by an application, the proposed service platform performs admission control and enforces proper traffic policies to ensure the quality of service (QoS) required by the application data flow. This enables QoS control on a per-application basis while preserving scalability and timing of application signaling. The experimental results show that service setup is realized in a time of the order of a few seconds. Scalability remarks show that this order of magnitude can also be guaranteed for networks of larger size.

A service oriented network architecture suitable for global grid computing

Grid computing frameworks built on top of the TCP/IP protocol stack are efficient in local area net- works (LANs), where almost dedicated network resources are available. Supporting distributed grid computing applications connected by Wide Area Networks (WANs), i.e. global grid computing, represent a more challenging task that requires the availability of network protocols capable of guaranteeing Quality of Service (QoS). In this paper we propose to utilize a Service Oriented Automatic Switched Transport Network (SO-ASTN) as the transport infrastructure for supporting global grid computing. The SO-ASTN consists of the addition to the plain ASTN of an extra layer, namely the service plane, designed according to the ITU-T Intelligent Network Conceptual Model. The main novelty of the architecture is the network awareness that grid computing applications are provided with. Global grid computing applications can therefore experience LAN QoS level in a Wide Area Network (WAN) scenario. We introduce a testbed, named SOON (Service Oriented Op- tical Network), for the evaluation of the proposed architecture. As network awareness use case we propose an implementation, in SOON, of the virtual topology request by utilizing Extensible Markup Language (XML) as an information exchange format.

Service-Oriented Multigranular Optical Network Architecture for Clouds

This paper presents a novel service-oriented network architecture to bridge the informational gap between user applications and optical networks providing technology-agnostic multigranular optical network services for clouds. A mediation layer (service plane) between user applications and network control is proposed to facilitate a mapping process between user application requests and the network services. At the network level, a multigranular optical network (MGON) is proposed and implemented to support dynamic wavelength and subwavelength granularities with different transport formats [optical burst switched (OBS), optical burst transport (OBT)], reservation protocols (one-way, two-way), and different quality-of-service (QoS) levels per service type. The service-oriented multigranular optical network has been designed, implemented, and demonstrated on an experimental testbed. The testbed consists of service and network resource provisioning, service abstraction, and network resource virtualization. The service-to-network interoperation is provided by means of a gateway that maps service requests to technology-specific parameters and a common signaling channel for both service and network resource provisioning.

A distributed signaling for the provisioning of on-demand VPN services in transport networks

Applications such as grid computing, storage or video-on-demand may need the provisioning by a transport network of ad-hoc secure end-to-end connections with guaranteed bandwidth, latency and resilience. The service plane (SP) is a functional layer, proposed by the authors, that enhances the automatically switched transport network (ASTN) for the provisioning of network services with a level of abstraction suitable for being invoked by applications. This paper details the distributed signaling running in the SP that implements the SP service abstraction and network resources virtualization capabilities. In particular, it focuses on the design of the signaling architecture among the centralized and distributed entities of the SP for the provisioning of on-demand Layer 3 (L3) virtual private network (VPN). A specific SP implementation is also presented and it is demonstrated by a testbed in which a video client application requests an L3 VPN in order to be connected with a video server across an MPLS-based transport network.

Cross-Functional resource orchestration in optical telco clouds

With communication endpoints given by mobile user devices and by elastically provisioned virtual resources, one of the main challenge of cloud-based service provisioning is to deploy a coordinated control of both data center and network resources in order to provide adaptive data delivery services and adequate service experience to cloud users. In this regard, flexible optical networks can play a fundamental role in telco clouds to effectively address bandwidth requirements of elastic data center operations. This paper presents a cross-functional orchestration platform able to coordinate the provision of cloud-based services with multi-granular data delivery services across flexible optical network. The architectural design is described along with orchestration policies that are compared in terms of blocking ratio of service requests against the level of utilization of network links.